It’s time to give a little bit again! If you are new to this giveaway, you can read all about how it began, here.

This time we are giving away an Itty Bitty Ball, YOU CHOOSE if it’s for a boy or a girl if you win!! The Itty Bitty Ball is a very popular Bit, and is loved by babies and young children. It is a great indoor ball to play with, or the perfect lovey for a baby or child who loves balls and can’t sleep with a normal toy ball! Both of my boys have Itty Bitty Balls (ages 2 & 6) and love them! Here’s a photo of a few different balls… If you’d like to enter to win an Itty Bitty Ball, here’s what you need to do…

Visit the Little Bits website and look through the fabrics and tell in your comment what fabric you *hope* the Itty Bitty Ball will be made out of if you win! No guarantees, but it doesn’t hurt to ask and we’d love to know which fabrics (or fabric combos) you like!

Leave a comment for your official entry. The winner will be chosen randomly from the number of your comment on Sunday, April 27.

You may only enter once.

If you’d like to help us spread the word, write a post on your blog, use the graphic if you want, and provide a link back to this post to encourage your readers to jump over and enter if it’s a Bit they might like to win! You can see samples of people who blogged about the contest here, here, and here (the winner of the last Bit!!). Thanks ladies!!

Make sure I have a way of getting in touch with you if you are the winner, or be sure to check back at this post on the 27th to see if you won! You can leave your email in the comment or get in touch with me if you see that you won!

I will post the winner on April 27, if I don’t hear from the winner within 4 days I will choose another winner.

We only provide free shipping within the USA. If you are out of the US and would like to enter, that’s fine, you’ll just need to pay for shipping!

Tot School began this week with an idea I got from Valerie. I poked holes in a Cheerios box of all different sizes and gave him different types of pasta to push through the holes. He really got into it and it was fun to watch him!We got out the colored mats from our Candy Land DVD Game and used them for a variety of games with K to work on colors…. His favorite was playing “head, shoulders, knees and toes” with them…And finally, we enjoyed the wonderful weather we had late in the week, in the morning the boys sat by the back door and drew what they saw…

This was not something planned, it just sort of happened, and I LOVED it! Then we made it outside and had a blast “water painting” K got a little wet, and then figured out that he was wet… And spent the rest of the day playing like this… It was a very spontaneous week, with lots of fun, not a lot of planning. I think the warm weather does that to us! I only hope this week will be as much fun!

If you’d like to see more Tot School posts, click here. And, be sure to check out the Tot School webpage for more ideas and links. And if you have a tot at home, join in the fun and share what you’re doing with your tot! Here’s how to get started if you’re new…

What are you doing for Tot School lately? Let’s define a “tot” as an 1-3 year old. I would say anything before a formal Pre-K curriculum. You know, the stuff we do with our little ones to provide opportunities to develop their love of learning and maybe teach them a few things. If you have any ideas you’d like to share, link up your exact post to Mr Linky (if you have questions about how to do that, let me know in a comment or email). Provide a link back somewhere in your post to this post so your readers can see other ideas too!

What a beautiful day it was here on Thursday! And it just so happened that our reading lesson for the day was a story about a kite, and the followup activity was to make our own kite! We did everything outside together and enjoyed every minute of it!

He drew a rainbow on the kite (wonder where he got that idea?) It was great because he had to remember Roy G Biv on his own. Then we did some measuring to be sure we followed the directions for making the kite. Here he is measuring 6 feet for the string. And finally we finished it! It wasn’t windy at all but he made the best of it, running around the yard and “making” it fly :).

Teaching short vowels came VERY easy for me! I owe it all to Leap Frog – Letter Factory…the DVD took care of it for me! Seriously, P learned all of his letters, and sounds in just under 3 weeks back when he was around 3-4. But now I am tutoring a little girl from the church we work with and she is way behind in school and I am having to reteach her basic skills, such as short vowel sounds. She is watching the Leapfrog DVDs but can’t watch them as much as P was able to (I let her borrow ours). So, I have her 1 hour per week and in that 1 hour I am trying to fill her brain with all sorts of tricks to make this relearning easier for her.

Last week something hit me as we were working together (P works with us too since they are friends from church). I thought I would share it here in case anyone else needs any ideas for teaching short vowel sounds. We used these photos below to make a simple book for her, with the clues of how to remember the sounds. She and P posed for the photos demonstrating what I had taught them. I made up these clues on my own, although I am sure they have probably been used somewhere before but yesterday they all came out of my brain and into action! Feel free to copy the ideas in any way you’d like and if you have any questions, let me know!

A: we called it “scary A” and we scream ahhhh when we see it!E: I taught her that her ear is similar in shape to an “e” and she can hear a long eeee in the word ear. When you want someone to speak up you say, “ehhhh.” I: see their arms are the shape of a lowercase i, with their fists being the dot. They are “itching” their arm, to remind them of the short i sound, as in itch.O: open wide for the dentist, say ahhhh, see your mouth makes an O to remind you of the letter sound you’re making!

U: we had 2 tricks for the short u. Their arms are in the shape of the U, they are pushing up. The other way is to imagine they are doing a pull up and it’s really hard and they are saying ugh.I hope that all made sense, it is really helping her a lot, and giving P a great review! This worked for me, for other Works for Me Wednesday ideas, visit Rocks In My Dryer!